| CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
| words cut deep
ɴᴏʟᴀɴ ᴍᴜʟʟᴇɴ
"Nolan Theodore Mullen," my mom said in a stern voice as I entered the living room after Oakley dropped me off at home. She and my dad were sitting on the couch, my dad with teary eyes and my mother with an angry frown on her face.
"I know, Mom. I fucked up. You don't have to tell me that." I stood there and crossed my arms. If she wanted to say something, she should say it now, because I was going to lock myself up in my room for the rest of the night. I needed to let my mind run wild for the night, or else it would happen tomorrow at work.
"What was going through your mind? Are you crazy?"
"I was sixteen," I said. "I didn't think I'd ever get back to acting again. It was stupid."
"What have you been taking?" she asked me. Her blue eyes were opened wide, and a crease marked her forehead. The only indicator that she had shed a tear or two was the slight smudge of her mascara where she must've wiped her waterline.
"I'm not taking anything anymore," I said. "I promise."
My mom shook her head, pulling out her phone in the process. "What was this? When was this?" she said, her phone held in front of my face. A distant, blurry picture of me with a cut straw in my nose.
The picture almost looked like it was from a movie scene. It was almost like it wasn't me. It was a character. The colored lights in the background slightly illuminated my face, and the boy behind me was wearing a large grin pointed at someone just out of frame. The kid next to him was having the time of her life, both her hands up in the air, and the person closest to the camera had only half his face in the frame as it was cropped, but even from half his face, you could see his goofy smile and dilated pupil.
I didn't remember who took the picture. I barely remembered the party.
My mom scrolled to the next picture. It was me again, this time in focus, with a blurry girl only half covering me. My cheeks were red and I grinned at a boy I liked at the time. My hair was a mess, and my face was shiny from sweat.
She scrolled again, and this was another party. This time I was smoking something, and finally looked away. I didn't remember a lot of these days.
"Who posted these?" I asked, glaring at my feet. This time there was a noise. A song was playing in the background, and two kids were talking singing along to the lyrics, laughing after they got to the chorus. A familiar head of messy blond hair paired with icy blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a gummy smile. Next to him was a small afro on a round face, with deepest dark eyes and a nose ring. These were Fletcher and Vinny.
"You think he'd fuck me? I bet you fifty dollars he'd fuck me," Fletcher said, with a blush that reached out from his neck to his ears.
"He's like royalty, man. Plus he's eye fucking Daisy, I think he's straight."
"Can you turn it off?" I asked my mom, but she didn't. I remembered now. Fletcher and I fucked that night, and it became a regular thing after that. I didn't quit long after that. This was still this year, but early. It must've been early February.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"He didn't leak these. He's not like that," I said. Fletcher possibly knew me better than even Ava did, or Oakley before tonight. We didn't love each other as boyfriends should, but I did love him like a close friend. Our relationship was the kind that wasn't supposed to last, and we both knew it. Our relationship was one to grow from.
"You know them?"
"Yeah. Fletcher is cool. It could've been Vinny." I didn't know him very well, but Vinny didn't seem to like me very much. He was Fletcher's best friend, so I didn't see why he would leak these unless they had a fight or he needed money.
But that came with a whole different problem, because if these were from Fletcher's phone, there might've been worse pictures and videos of me out there.
"Was that all?" I asked, taking my mom's phone from her hand and scrolling further. More blurry pictures of me, but that was all. "That's all, right?"
"'That's all'? How could it possibly be worse?" my dad asked me, raising his voice. "You doing cocaine, Nolan? Is that what this is? And those needles on the table, what are those? Heroin?"
"I never used needles," I mumbled, but apparently that wasn't the right thing to say as he laughed bitterly, looking at the ceiling as he ran a hand over his face.
"Is that supposed to console me, Nolan? I don't know who you are anymore."
The words cut deep, and anger bubbled up inside me.
"Because you weren't there!" I yelled. I had never yelled quite like this.
My mom stood between us, her back towards my dad as she kept the distance, as though she was breaking up a fight, but I wasn't any less angry at her than I was at him.
It was weird seeing my parents side to side again. I hadn't seen them in the same room since I was fourteen; not for a holiday, my birthday, or even my graduation. I always got to see one of their faces, or neither. But I could see how this was the occasion that made them push through whatever hatred they'd built toward each other over the years. I just wished they would've noticed what the fuck was going on with me a lot earlier.
"It's not like I was hiding anything from either of you. It was your pot I was taking, Mom," I said, looking her straight in the eyes. "How did you not notice your fourteen-year-old sneaking around taking your weed?"
I turned to my dad next.
"The last time I saw you I was clean. The time before that, though..." I laughed. It was Christmas last year. He shot me a last minute message asking me to have dinner with him, after I'd already stuffed myself with weed-infused gingerbread cookies with whatever guy I was screwing at the time.
It was so funny how little attention they had paid to me over the years. "I thought I was busted, but then I didn't hear from you until my next birthday."
My dad's face turned so red I thought he would explode, steam coming out of his ears and all. My mom's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. I'd never spoken to them like this, but god did I feel free.
"Do you guys know anything about me at all? What are my hobbies? What are my friends' names?"
"That's enough," my mom said, reaching for a plastic bag she'd left on the salon table. "We're gonna need you to take this." She handed me a small cup, and a box with a small piece of paper were in her free hand.
"You want to drug test me?" I shouldn't have been surprised. I'd given them every reason to question their trust in me, and blowing up on them felt good. It felt like for once I could breathe again, but I could've expected it to come with a side effect.
"We don't want any complaints," she said.
I took the cup from my mom's hands and stepped around them, trying to make it to my bathroom, but I was stopped again.
"What?" I asked.
"Downstairs restroom, door open."
"Excuse me?" I looked at my dad, who had an apologetic look on his face. "It's not like I'm carrying someone else's pee on me 24/7," I argued.
"No complaints," my mom said, escorting me to the bathroom.
But it was okay. Because maybe they did care about me after all.
•••
The drug tests had to be taken twice every day, and I did them without complaints until they gave me a little bit of privacy back. By day five, I was allowed to close the door.
At work, it was an unwritten rule that no one talked about what happened. It was the last few days, so I kept myself in character for as long as possible, surpassing the breaks and only becoming Nolan again once I stepped in my dad's car. Even on my last day, I didn't have the courage to properly say goodbye.
"No one's been bothering you, have they?" he asked. I shook my head, looking out the window and watching the other cast members stand around in a circle, laughing and talking as my dad drove me away.
"Feel proud of your work?"
"It's okay," I said. "There's still a press tour." I was hoping things would die down by then. "Do I still get to invite someone for Christmas?" I asked. Christmas was in only three more days, and I needed to see Oakley again. He was the only thing keeping me sane as I ignored Ava and Keith's calls, and the few texts I got from my cast mates.
"All your tests so far have been negative," he said, rubbing his chin as he thought about it. "Okay," he said. "Who did you want to invite?"
"Oakley," I said, looking out the window again to hide my smile from my dad's gaze. "We already had plans."
"I don't think it's a good idea to leave the house," he said, and I looked at him again. His eyes were fixed on the road, but he spared a second to look at me. "But you get to do whatever you want at home."
"Okay," I said. It was still better than nothing, and I'd get to see him, and feel him, and if we got at least a little privacy, I'd get to kiss him too. It was all I needed, all I'd been craving in my days of solitude. So my smile didn't fade.
•••
The next few days were uneventful. I tried going out to do some grocery shopping, but it proved to be impossible with paparazzi following me around like ants did honey.
"What do you want?" I asked when someone bumped their camera lens on my forehead. My dad prompted me to keep walking. But I didn't want to. I could handle this. Maybe they'd leave me the fuck alone if they just get answers.
They kept talking over each other, and I couldn't hear a single thing they were saying. All I could see were flashes blinding me. It felt like another movie premiere, but this time with me dressed in joggers and a hoodie, not talking about some character, but my life's story, as though I was made up, another character made to entertain.
"Have you talked out your unresolved issues with your dad?" the loudest voice yelled, but I deliberately ignored it.
"Is it true that you checked out of rehab?"
And I once again skipped the question. I made eye contact with the quietest reporter I could find, and gave him the opportunity to ask his question.
"H— how did you feel when you saw the pictures online?" he asked.
"If I'm being honest, I knew they'd have to come out at some point. I guess at the time I just didn't care."
I looked at my dad, who had his arms crossed like a bodyguard and kept his lips sealed as the other half of the reporters swarmed him.
"That's all for today," I mumbled, looking down, managing to push myself through the masses. I just wanted to go outside for a little while. Clear my head and get some food. But even that was too much to ask, apparently. I went straight back to the car, but my dad got in the driver's seat.
"I thought you needed something?" he asked.
"I did. But I can't even take two steps before I get stopped. Can we just go home?"
He nodded and pulled out of the parking lot.
"I can get it for you," my dad suggested. "I'll drop you off at home and then I'll grab whatever you need."
"Sure," I said. And he dropped me off at home like he said he would, immediately driving off as I exited the car. I texted him the shopping list as I made my way to the front door, but as I interred the key, I decided there was so much more to do than sit at home and read the same books over and over again, so I walked around the house to the backyard and lied in the grass, closing my eyes as the sun kissed my skin. I couldn't leave the garden as my mom would definitely be checking the cameras, and I didn't want to risk losing my Christmas visit.
God, I sounded like a prisoner.
•••
After my dad came back, I killed my time by making wonton soup, the dumplings being made from scratch. I'd never done it before, so they didn't turn out perfect, but I wasn't disappointed with the result.
My mom and dad sat at the kitchen table, both of them looking at each other as they watched me serve the concoction I'd made.
"When did you learn to cook?" my mom asked.
"Who did you think leaves you dinner every other evening?"
We weren't paying anyone for it, so I assumed she was aware it was me. Especially on the days I wasn't home to cook she must've noticed the lack of food.
"Rhea..." my dad said, as though disappointed that she hadn't noticed. As though he did. My mom seemed to have the same idea.
"At least I was here," she said with a scoff. My dad looked down at the food and started eating in silence, deciding this was not with arguing over.
The kitchen table fell silent, like any other day this week. It didn't come as a surprise anymore.
Sometimes I'd fantasize about a better set of parents. I'd think of how they would've been around when the problems were actually ongoing, and how they would laugh at the kitchen table while teasing me over having a boyfriend—or at the very least the assumption of a girlfriend. They'd ask me about my friends, and how they were doing. But there was none of that.
"We have to talk about how to move forward," my mom said.
"We can wait until after dinner," my dad said. But he quickly turned away as my mom glared at him.
"I have an appointment at 8:15. This has to happen now."
"Okay," I agreed.
"There's two options," she said. "You could clear things up, let everyone in on your life a little. It would be feeding into that boy-next-door image we've been trying to give you. But you could also ignore all of it," she said. The last idea piqued my interest, so I finally looked up. "You'd have to feed into what they believe you to be now."
"You want me to drink and do drugs again?" I asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Rhea..." my dad said, almost whining. "His health comes first. You're not promoting him to continue doing this."
"He's an adult, Bradley. You can't force him—"
"He's a teenager!" he yelled. He'd been yelling a lot lately. It happening so often only made it more jarring.
My mom saw it differently. They saw everything differently.
They are such opposites that they turned out to be the same.
"An adult. We can't force him to do anything anymore, it needs to come from himself." And then she turned to me.
She had been playing bad cop so far, so I knew there was going to be a catch.
"But know that if you continue that lifestyle, I will no longer be supporting you. Not in any way."
Her blue irises were fully visible as she raised her forehead, trying to make her point.
Not in any way. In the way she said it, I assumed it to not be an exaggeration. She wouldn't be my manager and agent anymore. She wouldn't handle my finances. She probably wouldn't even be attending my premieres.
I had no interest in the 'lifestyle' she was proposing, but in a way, her practically telling me that it was not her job to look after me anymore made anger rise up in my chest.
"So if I were to have my own place, you'd be cool with me doing that shit?" I asked her. Maybe she'd see how ridiculous it would be to not take care of your addict son you never cared for in the first place.
"I would be disappointed, but it would be your choice."
"Good to know," I mumbled. But I had done enough arguing, so I shut myself up.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
I will be updating more often. Not going quickly enough for me hahaha enjoy ❤️
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